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Week- PUZZLES – Colouring and Cutting

Due to all the celebrations and days off, meaning having dad around, the children haven’t had to much time for other than pure joy around papa’

So I had to leave both yesterday’s and today’s posts comprised in one. So easy because many times there can be some overlapping between categories, that is exactly the reason why I turned my weeks into themes. So well, talking of puzzles, my toddler has been so much into them lately that it came to me the idea of dedicating a week to them. They are obviously great entertainment for children and I count them as games. However, you can get really creative and grab the puzzle concept to turn it into a craft.

I have thought of so many ideas to use puzzles or better still, make your own. As some time ago, when I was looking after one of my little girls (she loves puzzles by the way) and she had tons of them, her favourite ones being of princesses. She had many of them except the little mermaid one. When I told her we could make one ourselves she got really excited. I drew a picture of the little mermaid, she coloured it and a couple of hours later, after colouring, sticking it to cardboard and cutting it into puzzle shapes she got to show off a lovely puzzle made by herself. Needless to say, she was thrilled!

My boy is not into princesses 🙂 so he got to colour a praying mantis (his favorite insect) fighting against a black widow

We then, as stated before, glued the drawing onto cardboard, (at this point, 7.30pm, we made part 1 of her sister’s puzzle and he got sent to bed) I then drew puzzle shapes at the back of the drawing and followed the lines for cutting it.

This is how it looked once cut and how it will remain until tomorrow…

And this is how it’s supposed to look first thing in the morning…

For my toddler (she was already asleep), we chose a picture of one of her favorite characters, glued it to wooden lolly sticks (this is when A got sent to bed “to wait for the glue to dry”) I then cut it and it looked like this:

I will leave it all jumbled up so when we wake up in the morning she gets excited to put it together, like this:

You have to try this out. It is a super easy project for children to do.

And you can also play around with these ideas. Maybe using the sticks to make something else. We will be using the sticks idea for a father’s day gift. The kids get to chose a picture where they are with him and we’ll turn it into a puzzle that gets hopefully played quite often. But you could also use the puzzle pieces to decorate a picture frame. Or why not using the lolly sticks for matching puzzles with colours, numbers, Capital/ lowercase letters… the possibilities are endless.

Do you have any other ideas to use or make puzzles? Maybe you like one of these ideas and want to try it with your children. If so, take a picture of what you do and link it up in the comments for others to see.